Further, after IDT hastily replaced Tewksbury -- on an interim basis -- with board member Jeffrey McCreary, formerly of Texas Instruments, McCreary has not talked to the media about what comes next at IDT under new management.

That silence, however, was broken last week in Seoul when McCreary showed up as a keynote speaker at the Analog Semiconductor Leaders' Forum, sponsored by Korea's specialty foundry, Dongbu HiTek.

In an interview with EE Times, McCreary revealed that Tewksbury's resignation was engineered by the company's board, which had been dealing for months with a "noisy" shareholder unhappy with IDT's "cheap stocks." The board's priority, said McCreary, is to make IDT's business "nicely and consistently profitable." The board also insists on IDT being "more judicious about where it puts the money" among a host of R&D projects IDT had undertaken over the years.

IDT's workforce is in the midst of adjusting to their interim chief, whose style is very different from that of Tewksbury, a veteran analog-engineer-turned-CEO who kept a low profile but remained firm and methodical in IDT's makeover from digital to analog and mixed signal since 2008. By contrast, McCreary, who spent 25 years of his career at TI, is a gregarious and outspoken engineer-turned-sales-guy, whose last job at TI was global chief marketing officer and chief sales officer.

IDT interim CEO Jeff McCreary

McCreary doesn't know how long his CEO stint at IDT will last. Asked about the future, McCreary said he informed the board of his interest in making his title permanent. The board is doing a CEO search and hasn't revealed its deadline.

McCreary said, "The board needs to do its job -- fully. If they decide to choose someone else, that's fine. I know that a business decision is never personal. I can go back to being on a board at IDT again."

Path to the future
McCreary noted that IDT needs to create "a path" to improve its operating margin, possibly to 20 percent. Although he declined to give detailed figures, due to the quiet period the company is in, the public record shows that IDT's operating margin for the full year in 2012 was 8.03 percent. In contrast, TI's operating margin during the same period was 18.89 percent.

McCreary also said IDT needs to "contain its appetite" for R&D projects. Noting that IDT invests more than $100 million in R&D, roughly 25 percent of the company's sales, McCreary said, "That's still quite a bit. But we need to deliver results."

Under Tewksbury's leadership, IDT had been making efforts to bring more focus to its business. Earlier this year, the company sold its smart energy product line to Atmel. IDT also divested its PCI Express enterprise flash controller business to PMC-Sierra for approximately $96 million in cash.

Obviously, from the board's point of view, that wasn't enough. "We are looking for more pieces like those that don't make sense to our business," said McCreary. Such a process, however, requires "surgical" precision, he added.

What remains the same
"What remains the same at IDT," said McCreary, are three product categories that "include timing, memory interface and serial switch." IDT has consistently thrived in these three areas, reportedly holding the leading market position in each.

Roughly speaking, 50 percent of IDT's revenue today comes from its claim-to-fame timing products; 30 percent from memory interfaces, critical to keep the speed up for registers and buffers between DRAM and servers; and 20 percent from serial switches, key to communication networks, according to McCreary.

IDT expects both timing and memory interface product categories to grow at 5 to 8 percent -- the semiconductor market average. Meanwhile, it predicts the serial switch segment to exceed the market's growth average. Sitting in a box between a radio card and digital card, IDT's serial switch products do everything from converting signals to compression and packet management, explained McCreary. "Every 4G base station needs this, and the 4G network is still growing."

>> <The new CEO at IDT is looking to improve financial performance. Jeff McCreary took over from Ted Tewksbury in August.

Wish him good luck of course. Yet. my point remains that if you have a really good guy and put him in a really bad sector/business, most times the latter wins. Ask the Apple VP that moved to JC Penney and then out. Our industry is simply not a place you can come and play 4 quaters of magic, the supply chain is complicated. The cars that will be branded as 2015 have all the parts in Ford, Toyota, etc now. So, even if you come now, you have 3 years lead time for compete for new supplies.

Mannerisms <<The new CEO at IDT is looking to improve financial performance. Jeff McCreary took over from Ted Tewksbury in August.

The hugely respected Tewksbury had initiated a turnaround at IDT, putting the company into new product programmes aimed at taking IDT further into the mobile internet, cloud computing and connectivity.

"Ted did a great job in injecting some new DNA into this company," says McCreary, "but were were spending a lot on R&D and not delivering great results and the company was vulnerable because the stock value was low." "The board thought we were vulnerable and had got distracted chasing new product ideas and were not delivering great financial results," says McCreary, adding, "IDT has divested itself of some businesses that were OK but needed money to develop."

In December 2011, Tewksbury told EW: "The biggest challenge is explaining to Wall Street, getting the analysts to understand that it does take time to turn around a company. Basically, in the semiconductor industry it takes about 3 to 5 years from the time that you define a product to the time you develop it, get it designed into customer systems, get it qualified, get it ramped up into early revenue, and then get it to peak revenue. Analysts and investors typically have a short attention span, so that's the biggest challenge. Right now, we're about 3 years into this 5-year turnaround. So, with that timeline constantly in mind, the next couple of years are going to be the most fruitful for the company in terms of revenue growth." The investors couldn't wait.>>

@adamrowski <<McCreary should thank his lucky star that he lucked into this strong CEO who built him a great company, now all he has to do is sit back, enjoy his life and take credit for all the good things to come for which he has done nothing to deserve.>>

McCreary is thanking Dr. Ted by trashing him in public.

This is the difference between tech guys and imposters. Tech guys get there by working hard and being brilliant.

Imposters try to get there by blowing hot air and glad handing everyone. Of course McCreary is enjoying his live, he doesn't have to work hard, it's all done for him, least he could do is show some gratitude.

@isagosen<< IDT's board engineered Dr. T's resignation? McCreary is part of the IDT board; the interim CEO voted out Dr. T so he can have a chance to become pernamnent CEO? And what qualifies this guy to be CEO? >>

Quite reprehensible. I hope the permanent CEO is beter than this guy. IDT has been around for more than 30 years, few tech companies can boast that these days, it deserves to be led by someone who's not a self-serving back stabber.

This is horrorible news, IDT was in everyone's peripheral vision as an industry bright spot, a little pocket of happiness where excellence reigns, now it is in serious trouble. What is happening to our industry?

A noisy shareholder? McCreary means the noisy Starboard Value for whom he carries water. Cheap stocks? Last year the stock was at $5, this year it trades at $9-10. Apparently growing the stock 200% is not good enough for this noisy shareholder. Let's see how high McCreary can push the stock.

McCreary showed very bad form. Instead of introducing his vision for a new IDT,he had little to say but for badmouthing the former CEO. If he's not ready to talk about what he will bring to the table, why do the interview? Sounds like he's given much more thought to trashing the former CEO than growing IDT.

Not sure how someone could dismiss an overstuffed pipeline of unending new 'World's Best' and 'World's First' high-margin products; market leadership in dozens of markets NEW to IDT; breathrough Timing solutions; a world-class company culture and bus loads of world-class engineers as "a few key seeds" planted by the former CEO.

That is like saying Steve Jobs and Bill gates planted a few key seeds for computing.

This is a fluff marketing piece for the lucky McCreary who will be able to have a party everyday at work, walking around, visiting every employee and 'cheering' them on because all the diffcult hard work, all the work that really matters in turning around IDT and keeping it on track for the next decade has been done by Ted Tewksbury.

McCreary should thank his lucky star that he lucked into this strong CEO who built him a great company, now all he has to do is sit back, enjoy his life and take credit for all the good things to come for which he has done nothing to deserve.